|
A two masted ship called the Tara and its crew are setting
sail for Antarctica to witness at first hand the impacts of
global warming and environmental change on the world’s
most southerly Continent.
Tara Expeditions, which is supported by the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), hopes to generate public interest
in both the beauty and frailty of planet Earth.
On board the vessel will be the internationally renowned
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado who is part
way through a project called Genesis. During 2004, he photographed
the Galapagos Islands, the Virungas forests and mountains
of Africa and whales in the Valdès Peninsula of Argentina.
Now Mr. Salgado has the haunting beauty of Antarctica in
his lens.
The expedition, which will sail to various areas including
the northern Weddell Sea, is scheduled to take one month.
It will also serve as preparations for Tara’s next and
arguably most important venture to date.
Between 2006 and 2008, the ship will spend two years adrift
in the Arctic as part of the 2007 International Polar Year.
Etienne Bourgois, project manager for Tara Expeditions, and
his team will be collaborating with international scientific
research projects as a platform and on-site think tank, in
order to help better comprehend the inner workings of global
warming.
Salgado and Genesis
The planet is in danger. This alarming cry is proclaimed
so often that it is rarely ever really heard. The earth’s
biodiversity only manages to subsist in the rare zones that
are still left to the wilderness. These areas are also the
only places that may still hold the key to our existence,
and to the origin of our species.
Salgado intends to explore the world in order to show the
purer face of nature and humanity, in an attempt to strengthen
the bond between our species and our planet.
Salgado has named the project Genesis, going back in time
as far as possible, to our planet’s very origins. He
is working on four chapters:
- Creation : air, water and fire, which gave life;
- Noah’s Ark: the animals which have resisted domestication
and remain “wild”;
- The first men: remote tribes with practically unchanged
lifestyles, qualified as “primitive”;
- The first civilizations : the remnants of the very first
human colonies, and early-organized society.
This journey is a form of planetary anthropology. It’s
also a statement being made, in order for those parts of the
globe that haven’t yet been contaminated to be preserved,
and to avoid the term “development” being systematically
synonymous with destruction.
The Genesis photos are to be published in major magazines
and newspapers, such as Paris Match (France), The Guardian
weekend edition (UK), Visão (Portugal) and Rolling
Stone (USA). The project in its whole will be undertaken with
the collaboration of UNEP, UNESCO and other institutions.
An article on the project will be published in the next edition
of Our Planet, UNEP’s magazine
Itinerary and fauna in the Antarctic Peninsula
Embarkation will take place in Ushuaia, on Argentina’s
southern extreme coast. Tara will then take the Beagle channel
and, according to the weather, will stop on the island of
Horn. Then she will sail towards the Diego Ramirez archipelago
where reside several large colonies of rock-hopper penguins,
albatross and petrels in an exceptional environment for tussock
grass(large sub-Antarctic Graminaceae). If the ice allows
for it, the expedition will follow its course to Marguerite
Bay, the point of interest there being the large number of
bird species and the reputed good weather conditions. Tara
will then sail on to the very rarely traveled waters near
the islands of Argentina, where dwell colonies of Adélie
penguins, crab-eater seals and Weddell seals. Passing by Port
Lockroy and Cuverville Island, the expedition will move towards
the Chilean base Videla, completely taken over by penguins.
This area is home to Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins, Humpback
whales and Leopard seals.
The rest of the trip will be devoted to the northern part
of Weddell Sea with the visit of Paulet Island (base camp
remnants of the Larsen-Nordenskjöld expedition of 1902)
and of Seymour, a strangely bare and sandy place within the
icy environment of Smith Island.
Tara’s final destination will be Deception island and
its huge crater, where the Chilean base at Pendulum Cove partly
melted during the eruption in 1967. The last eruption there
took place in 1992.
This itinerary describes the journey’s main framework,
without going into too much detail, seeing how in Antarctica
the weather and ice dictate their own conditions!
Tara Expeditions Contacts:
Eloïse FONTAINE - +33 6 12 13 04 67 eloise@taraexpeditions.org
Romain TROUBLÉ - +33 6 60 68 97 12 romain@taraexpeditions.org
Tara Expeditions web site: www.taraexpeditions.org
UNEP Contact:
Robert BISSET - +33 1 44 37 76 13 robert.bisset@unep.fr
UNEP web site: www.unep.org
|
